MacLeod Nine Productions - PRESS RELEASE

After the war with Hannelore Synopsis

This film is a portrait of Hannelore Scheiber in post-war Berlin. The story follows a linear chronology from her birth in January 1945 to her family circumstances during the war and post-war era, contact with Russian soldiers, the Russian blockade, and the Berlin Airlift (Luftbrucke) from 1948 to 1949. The film documents her school years from 1951 to 1967, the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, meeting her husband Jean Devigne, their courtship and marriage, up through their crossing through Checkpoint Charlie in 1982. My intention with this documentary was to film Hannelore at specific locations in Berlin and document her stories and memories in situ through an historical context. My goal was to catch her emotions surrounding her experience growing up in post-war Berlin.

Director’s Statement

I met Hannelore and her husband, Jean Devigne, 15 years ago, a few years after both my parents passed away. We first established a client-artist relationship when they became interested in my paintings. A personal friendship grew from this which now has elements resembling a familial relationship. As I got to know Hannelore, I became interested in her childhood and adult years in Berlin after the war. The impetus behind making this film was her stories, my personal attachment to her, and my interest in WWII history.

These seven vignettes (stories) of Hannelore’s life are my way of reciprocating all that she’s given me in our friendship. I also believe very strongly that oral histories like her’s are valuable records documenting the post-war period and the Cold War years in Berlin, the epicenter of WWII in Europe. What makes these seven vignettes special is that they are so personal. As we are confronted with war on an ongoing basis, I think there is value in narrative historical war documentaries that deal with the real and direct impacts of warfare on human beings. Personal testimonies offer a specific, concrete means for understanding the horrors of war. And because they are so personal and real, they avoid the abstraction and separation that are possible when war is discussed through the language of politics, operations, or policies. Documentaries of this nature offer a unique opportunity for understanding.

The ultimate adventure, when all the barriers and ogres have been overcome, is commonly represented as a marriage of the triumphant hero-soul with the Queen Goddess of the world. This is the crisis at the nadir, the zenith, or at the uttermost edge of the earth, at the central point of the cosmos, in the tabernacle of the temple or within the darkness of the deepst chamber of the heart.

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Meeting with the Goddesses is a chapter title I have taken from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, as this body of work deals with several themes centred around the sacred feminine, mythology, the archetypal mind, temples and funerary objects. The first is the theme of the mystery of life, and as part of that mystery, the search for meaning embodied by the notion of goddesses—a single or multiple “source of all things.“ I am interested in the spiritual process of asking the source/creator in order to manifest creation—whether this be an abundant harvest or victory in war. It is difficult to remove spirituality and explorations of the divine from the formal strictures and mandates of religion; thus, another theme explored in the exhibition will be the dualities of creation and destruction that are part of our concept of the divine, and which are exercised by human beings in the practice of religion. Many goddesses have creative and destructive powers. These are embodied in the terrible fury of the god of War, the life-giving fecundity of ancient Venus figurines, the breathtaking and abundant tableaux of life forms in cave drawings, depictions of human sacrifice or works that honor and venerate the First Nations, Celtic, Nordic, and Greek goddesses.

Walking into the exhibit space will give the observer the experience of walking into a kind of temple celebrating the feminine goddesses of antiquity, but the subjects I will be painting are present day living people who in my view, reflect the characteristics of these ancient archetypes in a contemporary society. The aim of this work is to investigate the dichotomy between the sexes and address the reality of male dominance (patriarchy) in order to make a shift in attitudes, which in turn will balance the masculine and feminine. In a time of social disorder and imbalance, this work explores the feminine and celebrates that shift in order to bring about a consciousness we have lost from the ancients. It would seem that our present construct is failing and that the world’s disorder reflects an imbalance that is destroying the very essence of life. Irish poet W.B. Yeats’ poem The Second Coming comes to mind.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surley the Second Coming is at hand.

W.B Yeats

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